dbenoy:Good games require novelty. It's the reason why new games exist. If novelty wasn't important, then we'd be able to just be able to keep playing the old games forever.

The point I think both I and Jim are trying to make, though, is that novelty alone isn't sufficient.

Novelty doesn't have to come from game mechanics though. I could keep playing 2D Castlevania games every year til the end of time if they just kept coming up with new level designs, characters and stories. The new mechanics they keep coming up with though? Meh. Don't really care one way or another.

Authors have managed to make use of the same toolkit for a long time, yet I still find reading books enjoyable. I haven't gotten tired of superhero movies yet despite the fact that they all have more or less the same story with different subplots for the characters involved.

And of course, I still enjoy playing Baldur's Gate, Super Mario Bros 3, A Link to the Past, Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy 6, etc.

Indeed! Strong agreement here. A new story or environment is novelty too, even if the rest of the game is almost completely identical.

Although, you can burn through a story fast. The best games are the ones which can create prolonged novelty through the mechanics alone, so that you can enjoy playing them dozens of times.

Portal is a great example of an amazing story combined with novel mechanics. Then, portal 2 was roughly the same mechanics but it had a new story and new puzzles :D They're both awesome games.

snave:I'm also in the camp of people who loved Mirror's Edge (PC), but only up to about the halfway point. The rubbishy, superfluous combat systems (allegedly forced in by a publisher wary of committing 100% to innovation) made some parts near the end close to unbearable.

Agreed--Mirror's Edge problem was not committing 100% to its innovative premise, and force-fitting in broken combat where it wasn't needed. The judo throws and slide tackling to get past guards and keep running were fine. Being locked into a kill-or-be-killed shooting gallery with half a SWAT team? No way.

If you're going to make a 21st century version of Solar Fox, where picking the right path and staying a step ahead of the enemy's bullets is the goal, then make the best version of that you can, and don't try and force players to play a crappy version of Half-Life in the middle of it.

This one I had to stop and think about for a bit. This isn't like your last video where I immediately, emphatically agree with you--that is not to say I necessarily disagree with you, Jim, only perhaps that it lacks clarity.

In a sense, it feels too broad and generalizing; examples are given, but they are insufficient to inform us of your world view on this matter. You could say that this is largely exacerbated by the possibility that gaming media use the term "Innovation" as a sort of misnomer.

It's easy to mistake "Innovation" for "Novelty", for example. A game that uses existing mechanics with little iteration for the purpose of storytelling has to work against a potential hit to novelty; a gamer who's exposed to this content might ask themselves "Well, this feels like game A, if I wanted to play game A I'd play game A", which may colour their perspective of the experience. Conversely, a game like Mirror's Edge is -extremely- novel, regardless of its flaws; it's aesthetic and mechanics are somewhat striking and leave an impression on you. You can safely say there's no game like Mirror's Edge on the market.

Gaming, by its very nature, is iterative, so you can see a sort of push to keep moving forward and to avoid stagnation. The market has been very worried about the latter, specifically, though the over-saturation of the shooter genre is a little more complicated an issue and it really isn't the only example of this happening. Really, the Modern Warfare franchise is to shooters as WoW is to MMOs--so immensely popular that many game developers try to leech off the market, often very poorly. Nobody really talks about the stagnation of the MMO market--though I guess it's worse for shooters because a shooter is easier to develop and easier for the public to ingest on the whole. But I digress.

I guess this particular topic just demands a lot of articulation; a lot more observation on a granular level to see where this goes wrong, is what I'm getting on about.

I hate to pull this card, but Singularity would have been better if it was less of a port. If I remember right from whenever I played it (maybe a year or two ago), "Use" and "Reload" were the same key. I can understand that on a console since there are a limited amount of buttons, but they could have taken the time to fix it for the PC version (it got really annoying).

Not nearly as annoying as Gears of War 2 though. Jacking up the controls for the sake of jacking them up? I wish they made 2 and 3 on PC so they were at least playable (or is there a way on 360 to switch the controls to the "standard shooter controls"?).

Oh bugger off, The Path isn't trying to be innovative, it's an art game built around exploration and unprecedented levels of atmosphere. I don't know exactly what your perpetual beef is with this game, but it has no place in this discussion.

debigcheez:It feels like Jim is bashing innovation itself in this one.

Indeed, that's what I felt too. His message could be lost or misinterpreted by some people because of that.

Innovation for the sake of isn't good, innovation from necessity is a good thing(looking at Metal Gear Rising: I don't speak Engrish).That is a lesson dvelopers must learn in order to be successful. Now if they weren't constantly pressured by publishers to make their product sell the "the masses" and give them more freedom to tweak the game for the best experience for the certain player, not every single player.

I think the word "innovation" has become such an overused buzzword that it has basically lost all meaning. I mean, there are so many games where they talk about how innovative it is, when it's really not. Basically, I think the gaming world needs to stop using this word.

I think the bigger issue here is not whether or not a game innovates, but whether or not a game does anything different. If a game doesn't offer me a different experience than something else I could be playing, then I probably won't see a reason to bother. If a game offers a unique experience, then it will probably be much more memorable and enjoyable than one that doesn't. And if a game is unique, then I am much more willing to overlook flaws (although a game's flaws should never be free from criticism), because a unique game is going to be inherently more interesting to play than one that isn't.

And being different doesn't necessarily mean innovation. Look at Twilight Princess, for example. Ignoring motion controls, the game doesn't really innovate from the standard Legend of Zelda formula, but it offers many things, such as the wolf mechanics, the very well don companion character, and the overall darker tone, that make it unique from other Zelda games.

Now, don't get me wrong, just because a game doesn't do anything significantly different doesn't mean the game has no value (I love the Pokemon games, for example, and I won't try to argue that they're substantially different from one another). It's just that if most games don't offer anything different, then gaming will start to get really boring, really fast.

Gizmo1990:Hard to disagree with all that. Also really nice to see some love for Lost Odyssey. I love that game, to me it is the only good Jrpg to come out this gen and as a FF fan it was nice to enjoy a Jrpg for a change as I am of the opinion that each FF after X has been the gaming equivalent of Dog shit.

Going off topic here, but I disagree considering this past generation gave us Tales of Vesperia, Valkeria Chronicles, and World Ends With You. There is a lot of good out there when you stop holding Final Fantasy as the benchmark.

I will give you Valkeria Chronicles. I am ashamed to admit that I forgot about it and I loved it just as much as Lost Odyssey. I felt very 'meh' about Tales of Vesperia but I did not get very far into it before my xbox died and by the time I got a new one ,my friend had sold it. I have not played World Ends With You due to it being on the DS and I have not played a handheld since I got a Gameboy Colour [insert years here] ago.

And I long ago stoped using FF as a benchmark for anything but at the time it was all I had to compare Lost Odyssey to.

I thought Singularity was "Meh" for the same reason I thought Halo was "Meh" and that's the weapons that sound like cap guns wrapped in bubble wrap. The TMD was an underutilized central feature, and the whole game had this eerie uncannyness to it, like I wasn't really there, like I wasn't really part of the game.

This is one of the few videos where I disagree with pretty much everything you said. I personally always prefer change over things staying the same even if it means that it could get worse. I never liked the saying "if it's not broken, don't fix it." Yes, this produces a lot of crap but I simply get bored really quick of things that stay similar or even the same for too long. To take one of your examples, this is why I've only ever played two Zelda games and was too bored to finish a third one that I had started.

Sure, it produces a lot of crap but good things will come out of it as well and I like that much more than sticking with what works. So yes, I don't think it's bad if they innovate too much just for the sake of it compared to too little.

Also, most of the examples you used for games that are good because they didn't change much, are kinda, not so good games in my opinion.

I am disappointed...Because he didn't say "Are you my mommy?" while wearing the gas mask...

On a more serious side.Well, it's true what he says.Innovation for the sake of innovation is kind of like every minister of traffic or whoever is responsible for that stuff adding more traffic signs and lights for the sake of adding them, just so nobody can say they didn't do anything.

That was a good game with good gameplay. It's weakest point may have been the story but that's just because it was simple, that did make it bad hell that doesn't make it lacking either. The story was more character driven and those characters had more depth than the one from Lost Odyssey, that made it overall more entertaining. But that's just my opinion, isn't? :P

Yeah, innovation isn't guaranteed to produce something good, but without the failed experiments along the way we don't end up with the good things that innovation can produce.

Also, those examples... yeah.

Darksiders was soulless, dull and failed to even imitate other games well. Ni No Kuni? Seriously? And what's this... fucking Singularity? Jesus. I'm drowning in unremarkable over here, someone get me a shot of innovation, quick! If that's the kind of sludge that an inspired lack of innovation produces, then I say bring on the failed experiments.

I had more fun with Mirror's Edge than all of those combined. Hell, I'd rather play The Path than some of those games.

You know, i could never bring myself to agree with the "Zelda is the same game over and over again." sentiment. I will admit that Mario has gotten kinda repetetive since Galaxy/New Super Mario Bros. But Zelda? Well, they build on the same basic structure as it is expecter from a game of the same series but all of them have fundamentally different key gameplay features. Ocarina of Time was first one in 3D. Majoras Mask had its 3 days cycle. Wind Waker had its sailing and it's island based world. Twilight Princess had it'a transformation into a wolf and it Dark World/Light Worlds structure. And Skyward Sword, while i didn't like it, had it's sky world and of course motion controls.

I don't care how 'good' the story 'is' if I have to trudge through mediocre shooting gallery after shooting gallery with crappy controls.

yet somehow, this bad gameplay is 'subversive' and 'adds' to the experience.

No, it doesn't, it's just fucking boring.

Well, you know, except for the fact that Spec Ops wasn't really innovative, considering the only original thing in the game was it themes and overall message. But, if you want to keep banging on about how much you hated the game and how everyone else should too, even if it doesn't make sense, go right ahead. :D

OT: Good ep. Jim, but I am not certain how I feel on this issue. While innovation isn't necessarily desirable, the same can be said for lack of innovation, and I do think that one needs to make a certain amount of changes to a franchise over time to prevent it from becoming stale. Innovating for the sake of innovating isn't really bad, in my eyes, you just need to actually pull off your innovations for it to work. :\

I loved Darksiders, and thought it was great to finally have a zelda-like game on the PC. Even if Darksiders 2 didn't quite draw me in like the first game did, it was still a really good series that had great potential.

Singularity was very predictable, but both the gunplay and level design was solid and thoroughly enjoyable. With a lower pricetag, it probably could've done better than it did.

I never played mirrors edge, but everything I've read about it makes me think it's pretty boring.

I'm looking forward to trying Ni No Kuni later, when I borrow it from a friend.

I really wish Jim would stop his attempts at being funny (like him dressing up like whatever at the end), he ends up looking like one of those very poor taste MTV VJ's who wish they're turning out to be intellectual marvels full of cynicism...

More to the point, I might not agree with all games he used as an example (Mirror's Edge remains as one of my favorite games, it gives me a very soothing feeling) but that matters not. Fact is, "innovation" is something you don't try to hard to create, it's a like a burp, it just comes out. You don't sit everyone in a brainstorm and say "people, we need to innovate our next game", you'll probably end with ideas that: a) didn't innovate anything at all if you look deeply into it; b) shows off as something that was "forced into existence", giving a vibe of incompletion (as much as I love Heavy Rain, I felt that mood there); c) things that didn't need changing... change, often for the worst (Vita force feeding touch controls where they're not due).The game must entertain, that's all, if it's gritty and all gray filtered, but you're having fun, than the game reached it's objective. Sometimes shit will happen, and all of a sudden a game will do a given thing for the first time in gaming history, and that will be an innovation, but that happened spontaneously, maybe because they needed a way to convey a character's feeling to the player (in the first God of War, the quick time events were excellent in making you feel like you were Kratos himself putting all his strength to bring down a boss with style).And yeah, Singularity rocked!

I don't care how 'good' the story 'is' if I have to trudge through mediocre shooting gallery after shooting gallery with crappy controls.

yet somehow, this bad gameplay is 'subversive' and 'adds' to the experience.

No, it doesn't, it's just fucking boring.

Well, you know, except for the fact that Spec Ops wasn't really innovative, considering the only original thing in the game was it themes and overall message. But, if you want to keep banging on about how much you hated the game and how everyone else should too, even if it doesn't make sense, go right ahead. :D

OT: Good ep. Jim, but I am not certain how I feel on this issue. While innovation isn't necessarily desirable, the same can be said for lack of innovation, and I do think that one needs to make a certain amount of changes to a franchise over time to prevent it from becoming stale. Innovating for the sake of innovating isn't really bad, in my eyes, you just need to actually pull off your innovations for it to work. :\

PsychedelicDiamond:You know, i could never bring myself to agree with the "Zelda is the same game over and over again." sentiment. I will admit that Mario has gotten kinda repetetive since Galaxy/New Super Mario Bros. But Zelda? Well, they build on the same basic structure as it is expecter from a game of the same series but all of them have fundamentally different key gameplay features. Ocarina of Time was first one in 3D. Majoras Mask had its 3 days cycle. Wind Waker had its sailing and it's island based world. Twilight Princess had it'a transformation into a wolf and it Dark World/Light Worlds structure. And Skyward Sword, while i didn't like it, had it's sky world and of course motion controls.

Glad to read i'm not the only one to think this, people just like to hate (for lack of a better word) on familiarity or formula (or something).

Ni no kuni was a giant pile of over hyped mediocrity. you could remove everything pertaining to the white witch from the story and vastly improve the overall experience. Only one small hitch would need to be re-written (left out due to spoilers) and several other factors needed more work. An overly verbose font of verbal diarrhea. Honestly how long did you play that you continued to read each and every give/take heart text?

I don't think the issue is so much with developers innovating for the hell of it. Afterall, experimentation is needed to find out what the Next Big Thing is going to be, and so of course for every diamond there's going to be a lot of dirt and run-off. I can kind of see that reviewers praising a game just for being innovative can paint a skewed pictures, but, again that's always a subjective matter. So if someone thinks that the new idea makes a game worth it, that's his or her opinion. A common consensus may form for a game that's held up as a classic or booed off the stage, but not always.

As for the other point-that games are critized for 'not being innovative,' I think the real problem is that it's too easy a comment to make. Almost anyone can say that they don't like the latest Call of Duty game or what-have-you because it's too 'formulaic', but that doesn't tell us anything about what he has a problem with.

The histrionics of David Cage notwithstanding, Heavy Rain was an important experiment. Even you, Jim Sterling, were fairly praising of the game, highlighting its shortcomings but nonetheless eventually awarding it a 7/10. With you being the harsh critic that you are, that's what I'd say is a positive score, and it's baffling that for all the (fair) criticism you throw at David Cage's megalomania, you actually gave it a thumbs up at the time.

For its ambition and the genuinely exciting moments it provides, Heavy Rain is a good game. It had enough tools to be something truly spectacular, but its developers were unfortunately not up to the task. PS3 owners should definitely play it, and many will hail it as a classic, but anybody with an eye for a good story and a desire to not have their time wasted will be exasperated by the many slow chapters and the poor writing. Everybody should be able to have fun with it, and that is the most important part. It's just that the fun is accompanied by a sour aftertaste.

Ultimately, Heavy Rain is an experiment that both succeeded and failed, when it could easily have been a total success if the brains behind it weren't trying so hard to be smart, and cared more about providing a sensible plot as opposed to a shocking one. As a game, Heavy Rain is pretty good for the most part. Heavy Rain is just damn lucky it isn't the movie that it wishes so badly to be.

Another argument in favour of Heavy Rain would be the way it paved the way for other games to pick up the gauntlet, learn where HR went wrong, and do it a whole lot better. Hence, The Walking Dead, which ended up receiving quite a bit of praise, if I remember correctly.

Similarly, take Alpha protocol. Yes, the game is buggy, confusing, with some poor design choices. Yet, at the same time, it had flashes of sheer brilliance. Again, time has seen better games like Deus Ex: Human Revolution and TWD take their cues and implementing dialogue as a dynamic part of gameplay, the latter also inclduing the limited time to give an answer. Likewise, Dishonored would take cue from the idea that your actions have weight in actual gameplay, by changing the worlds awareness to you

So, innovation should not necessarily be praised acritically, but still encouraged, nonetheless, if nothing else, for the opportunity for someone to have another go at these ideas somewhere down the road in a more successful fashion. Especially in an industry you yourself so often criticise for becoming too homogenic ( and we've seen just what that did to your favourite IP, Dead Space, who (necro)morphed from a fairly distinct shooter with its own character and style into something that becomes increasingly "safe"), this viewpoint, presented in such a fashion, comes across as a bit of contradictory.

The main criteria for a game should be that it is good. Which is why I like to play darksiders even though I am not invested in the story, or in characters that all seem to have sucked down lemons dipped in vinegar for all the uber seriousness they espouse. But, the sheer gall in which they steal so many ideas from so many places is nonetheless entertaining, and ends up almost giving it a personality of its own. But the lack of risks are severely crippling this industry, giving way to way too many clones that sacrifice their personality for "safe". And "safe" did not make Shadow of The Colossus, it did not make Journey, it did not make Bioshock, it did not make planescape: Torment, it did not make Prtal. Safe, on the other hand is killing God of War and other major franchises dead in a "more of the same" mentality and limiting our choice as gamers.

The answer lies in the middle. Selling new toys under the guise of innovation is, I agree, not good, and nor should games trying something new get a free pass. But, on the other hand, while not fixing what is not broken is all well and good, the industry has been creatively broken for a while, so, one could argue that it needs a little fixing, especially in an age where all personality is watered down to capture the lightning in the bottle that Gears of War, God of War, Call of Duty and GTA once did. Games need new roads and new paths beyond the increasingly sterile world of games. Dragon's Dogma already showed that its organic battles are fare more fun than all the director's cut sterile set pieces of GoW, whose QTEs only made sense at a time where hardware posed an obstacle to interactive spectacle. As such, I'll praise it, flawed as it might have been and hope that they'll expand upon those ideas.

Kinda like what you did in your Heavy Rain review, come to think of it: praise its innovative elements and recognizing their potential while not being oblivious to where they go wrong. You had the right of it then.

Yeah, innovation isn't guaranteed to produce something good, but without the failed experiments along the way we don't end up with the good things that innovation can produce.

Which is all well and good, but developers can play around with that behind the scenes without needing to shoehorn it into a game where it doesn't fit just because it's there TO shoehorn into the game. This would be like defending a bad stand-up act by saying that someone has to be telling bad jokes in order for us to get to the good ones. Um... no, they don't. If a comedian writes a joke and decides it isn't funny, he scraps it. Same should go with gameplay ideas that don't work-out in practice as well as they seemed to in the developer's head.

Ehrm. Also, Zelda does include some pointless innovations; the last two were on the goddamned Wii, weren't they?

not really, the wii mote sword thing had already been done. ^^ Also even though it was not that great i really like the idea of wielding the sword, will be pretty cool when they can make it work properly.

Ehrm. Also, Zelda does include some pointless innovations; the last two were on the goddamned Wii, weren't they?

not really, the wii mote sword thing had already been done. ^^ Also even though it was not that great i really like the idea of wielding the sword, will be pretty cool when they can make it work properly.

You forgetting horse mounted sword combat in Twilight Princess, something that should of happened earlier but meh.

I don't care how 'good' the story 'is' if I have to trudge through mediocre shooting gallery after shooting gallery with crappy controls.

yet somehow, this bad gameplay is 'subversive' and 'adds' to the experience.

No, it doesn't, it's just fucking boring.

That's how I felt about Resident Evil 4. I tried to FORCE myself to enjoy it because it seems to be a universally "loved" game, but the controls were just so shitty and quick time events so annoying that it wasn't worth the hassle to get to the crazy stuff everyone praises.

Machine Man 1992:I thought Singularity was "Meh" for the same reason I thought Halo was "Meh" and that's the weapons that sound like cap guns wrapped in bubble wrap. The TMD was an underutilized central feature, and the whole game had this eerie uncannyness to it, like I wasn't really there, like I wasn't really part of the game.

Exactly. The gaming blogosphere here in Sweden creamed its pants because of Singularity so I kind of felt obliged to play it. It was just a giant "Meh". Bad level design, boring brown setting, extremely underutilized TMD that just became an autokill thing you used when you were low on ammo. The time puzzles were awful and since the game wasn't open world in its design the audio diaries were never fully realized. The only interesting thing about the game was the Seeker rifle or whatever it's called.

I haven't played Darksiders yet (pile of shame...), but I have friends who have recommended it, saying it's kind of a cross between God of War and Zelda, even if it's a bit drawn out.

Yeah, Jim could really have used better examples. I agree with his premise about polish over innovation.

Funny that you bring up mirror's edge, since I never thought it was all that innovative. I thought it was very different from most other games, but not necessarily innovative. They just said, "hey let's make a 3d platformer, but with a first person camera instead." The only truly innovative thing about that game was the 'runner vision' idea, which I honestly think is one of the best examples of elegant game design in existence. They didn't utilize it as well as they could have, but it was a brilliant idea nonetheless. People cry out for a mirror's edge sequel because so few games have the emotional tone of that game. It really was BEAUTIFUL, in a way no other game I have ever played is. The problem was that the design team were a bunch of idiots who made poorly designed levels, poorly implemented features (why do I have to pick up a belt-fed LMG and mow down policemen in a game about parkour?) and a poorly implemented story. The thing is, those are all surface issues that could VERY easily be fixed by a sequel. The core of that game was so unbelievably good, and it had some of the best visual design of any game ever made, and it just pisses me off that we are not getting a mirror's edge 2. I get why they aren't making it, mirror's edge didn't sell and this is a business after all, but just....sigh.

I don't care how 'good' the story 'is' if I have to trudge through mediocre shooting gallery after shooting gallery with crappy controls.

yet somehow, this bad gameplay is 'subversive' and 'adds' to the experience.

No, it doesn't, it's just fucking boring.

Well, you know, except for the fact that Spec Ops wasn't really innovative, considering the only original thing in the game was it themes and overall message. But, if you want to keep banging on about how much you hated the game and how everyone else should too, even if it doesn't make sense, go right ahead. :D

OT: Good ep. Jim, but I am not certain how I feel on this issue. While innovation isn't necessarily desirable, the same can be said for lack of innovation, and I do think that one needs to make a certain amount of changes to a franchise over time to prevent it from becoming stale. Innovating for the sake of innovating isn't really bad, in my eyes, you just need to actually pull off your innovations for it to work. :\

I just don't get why everyone loves the damn thing :D

I have an idea... Do you like Gears of War style shooters? How about COD style shooters? How important do you think good gameplay is in a game? How many games have you enjoyed solely for the story? Do you typically enjoy games that place story above gameplay? How often do you find yourself enjoying "art" games? And finally, what are your feelings towards atypical narrative structures?